Ambitious game is rough round the edges (Fallout 3 (PS3))

Member Name: monkeyboy2

Product:	Fallout 3 (PS3)
Date:	20/07/09 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Open-style RPG play

Disadvantages: Poor production values in places

I was so looking forward to this game. For years. I was a fan of the Elder Scrolls series and had wasted hours of this my only life playing Oblivion, and when I was younger loved and played Fallout 1 and 2 quite a few times too. So this was going to be the culmination of these two games I had loved. And when I played it I was... a tiny bit disappointed, I'll admit. Mainly it was the easiness and brevity of the main mission. As much as I tried to tease it out, it was over before I knew it. And in the final main mission, with Hollywood explosions and plasma beams everywhere, your character is nothing but a spectator, walking behind or in amongst the action with little or nothing to do to affect the outcome. The voice acting is pretty much uniformly rubbish, but not quite as bad as Oblivion. Also, the game is a little buggy - which is to be expected with Bethesda as they always make superb games that are rough around the edges - but I even had my console freeze and crash when playing this game. That really shouldnt happen with a console. And yet, despite my disappointment with it, there's no denying this is a great game and one I would recommend to most people. The action is fun, the guns and explosions are great and the free-form exploration is immensely rewarding. In fact, despite my gripes I am playing it through a second time with a different sort of character and I am very much enjoying it.

Summary: A flawed masterpiece